1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image forming apparatus, and a billing management method in the image forming apparatus. In particular, the present invention relates to an image forming apparatus capable of managing a place to which billing for image formation is issued, and a billing management method in the image forming apparatus.
2. Description of the Related Art
In an office and the like, occasionally, image forming apparatuses, such as copying machines, printers, and complex machines thereof, that is, MFPs (Multi Function Peripherals), connected to a network have been allocated to departments such as a sales department and a general affairs department, respectively. In such a usage, typically, a state of usage is grasped for each image forming apparatus, and billing is issued to the department to which the relevant image forming apparatus is allocated.
However, this billing management method has the following problem. For example, in a case where a first department such as a general affairs department creates document data and, then, issues a request of image formation (e.g., printing) to a second department such as a sales department, if an image forming apparatus allocated to the second department is used for printing out the document data, billing is typically issued to the second department. Consequently, this method lacks fairness.
In order to solve this problem, for example, Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication No. 2002-351624 (hereinafter, referred to as Document 1) discloses a technique of adding information about designation of a billing destination to document data prior to distribution of the document data from a department (general affairs department) that issues a request of image formation.
By adoption of the technique disclosed in Document 1, billing can be issued to the general affairs department even in the case where the document data is printed out by the image forming apparatus in the sales department. In the general affairs department, however, each time document data is created, information for designation of a billing destination must be added to the document data. Consequently, there is a problem that an operation at the time of issuing the request becomes complicated. Further, there is a problem that even in the case where the information for designating the billing destination as the general affairs department is added to the document data, if the document data is printed out in the sales department on condition which has not been desired by the general affairs department (e.g., the number of sheets of paper to be printed, a paper size), billing for such printing operations is also issued to the general affairs department.